The Garden of Allah eBook

The man, however, intent on replacing the coin he
had lost, took no notice of her, but went on vociferating
and gesticulating. The traveller said something
in Arabic. Domini was now very angry. She
gripped the jacket, exerted all her force, and pulled
the Arab violently from the door. He alighted
on the platform beside her and nearly fell. Before
he had recovered himself she sprang up into the train,
which began to move at that very moment. As she
got in, the man who had caused all the bother was
leaning forward with a bit of silver in his hand, looking
as if he were about to leave his seat. Domini
cast a glance of contempt at him, and he turned quickly
to the window again and stared out, at the same time
putting the coin back into his pocket. A dull
flush rose on his cheek, but he attempted no apology,
and did not even offer to fasten the lower handle
of the door.

“What a boor!” Domini thought as she bent
out of the window to do it.

When she turned from the door, after securing the
handle, she found the carriage full of a pale twilight.
The train was stealing into the gorge, following the
caravan of camels which she had seen disappearing.
She paid no more attention to her companion, and her
feeling of acute irritation against him died away
for the moment. The towering cliffs cast mighty
shadows, the darkness deepened, the train, quickening
its speed, seemed straining forward into the arms
of night. There was a chill in the air.
Domini drank it into her lungs again, and again was
startled, stirred, by the life and the mentality of
it. She was conscious of receiving it with passion,
as if, indeed, she held her lips to a mouth and drank
some being’s very nature into hers. She
forgot her recent vexation and the man who had caused
it. She forgot everything in mere sensation.
She had no time to ask, “Whither am I going?”
She felt like one borne upon a wave, seaward, to the
wonder, to the danger, perhaps, of a murmuring unknown.
The rocks leaned forward; their teeth were fastened
in the sky; they enclosed the train, banishing the
sun and the world from all the lives within it.
She caught a fleeting glimpse of rushing waters far
beneath her; of crumbling banks, covered with debris
like the banks of a disused quarry; of shattered boulders,
grouped in a wild disorder, as if they had been vomited
forth from some underworld or cast headlong from the
sky; of the flying shapes of fruit trees, mulberries
and apricot trees, oleanders and palms; of dull yellow
walls guarding pools the colour of absinthe, imperturbable
and still. A strong impression of increasing
cold and darkness grew in her, and the noises of the
train became hollow, and seemed to be expanding, as
if they were striving to press through the impending
rocks and find an outlet into space; failing, they
rose angrily, violently, in Domini’s ears, protesting,
wrangling, shouting, declaiming. The darkness
became like the darkness of a nightmare. All
the trees vanished, as if they fled in fear.
The rocks closed in as if to crush the train.
There was a moment in which Domini shut her eyes,
like one expectant of a tremendous blow that cannot
be avoided.